


And so It passes.

by Thesaurus_with_no_words



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Bulma (mentioned), Character Study, Chi-Chi (mentioned), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Friendship, Gen, Goku whump, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Male Friendship, Past Character Death, Son Gohan (mentioned) - Freeform, Son Goten (mentioned) - Freeform, Trunks (mentioned), finding yourself, introspective, vegeta you magnificent tsundere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 23:03:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11633781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thesaurus_with_no_words/pseuds/Thesaurus_with_no_words
Summary: Goku was… Is an alien. A saiyan.How did this affect him? Well, truth be told, the first 22 years of his life it didn’t.Not in any way he was aware of.Decades later he starts to realize that he was wrong.There's always a foe you can't stop.





	And so It passes.

**Author's Note:**

> Cranked this out between 3 and 5 am because Saiyans/saiyajins (whatever) have crazy long lifespans if they manage not to get themselves killed (or have access to dragon balls) and that has implications I wanted to explore. Also I love hurting Goku, because the boy is like a rubber ball and bounces back anyways.

Goku was… Is an alien. A saiyan. How did this affect him? Well, truth be told, the first 22 years of his life it didn’t. Not in any way he was aware of.

He had a tail, sure, but among all the animal people and the talking dinosaurs, he actually didn’t stand out that much?

His strength then? It might have been a tip off, had he gone unaware for longer, but for the first 22 years of his life Earth had not failed to continually provide him with stronger opponents.

Looking back, he is aware how powerless they were compared to his own potential. How laughable his own strength had been too, considering what was really out there, in the space unknown to him, but back then…

Chichi had been a decision he wavered on, and questioned the wisdom off, more than a few times after they got married. It had, very rapidly, become clear to him back then, that he’d had no clue what he’d been getting into.

Chichi spoke of love at a time when romantic love was not an emotion well known to him. Sure, he had come to care for her with time, but at first it had been like living with an overly attached roommate who wanted to control your day to day life down to the minutest detail.

Like an ill-fitting shoe, something had gnawed at him in their so called marriage – a concept he still struggled to understand even months after the fact.

Then Gohan was born.

That… Changed things. Already from the time Chichi fell pregnant, and when she really started showing, it was like some part of him calmed down. At the same time, it was also exiting. What would his child be like? Would it be strong, like him? Clever like Chichi?

Goku spent time actually getting to know the person he’d bound himself to, and as his wife’s belly got rounder, the shape drew him in like the full moon and his blood sang.

When his son was born, he finally felt… Not alone anymore. It was a disquieting feeling, because until then he had never even been aware that he felt lonely in the first place.

It hadn’t been the kind of hole you could fill with friends, rivals or even a lover. It was something he hadn’t understood, couldn’t place. It tied together with the feeling that he’d missed doing something important, but he just. Couldn’t. Place it.

…Something about the Earth?

Gohan smiled a lot. Cried a lot too. Goku didn’t really notice back then, but now, looking back, he could see how he’d gotten calmer as he cared for his son. More patient. Raising a child turned out to be _hard_ , not because he suffered under the lack of sleep like Chichi seemed to be doing, but because it stirred feelings in him that he wasn’t very familiar or immediately comfortable with.

The familial protective love he recognized from what he felt for his friends, though it was stronger and more encompassing, yet centred on his family.

His _family_.

The fear was harder.

There was no enemy, no immediate threat, and yet he could never really relax and calm down, not as long as his son existed in the world: Soft and unsteady on chubby legs, grabbing for hair, fingers and sharp objects with equal enthusiasm.

Still it was peaceful, and yes, he coddled Gohan. Lifted him up high and threw him to the sound of pearl like baby laughter and Chichi’s admonishments to be careful.

Carried him whenever those small arms were lifted towards him.

Delighted in simple things like Gohan’s first steps (outside, after spotting a butterfly he didn’t want to get away) and his first words (mama and dada, simple words that depending on strength and infliction could get you anything) to the time Gohan finally toppled into the river for the first time and proved to be a natural swimmer.

He didn’t tell Chichi about that last one, because for a moment even Goku’s own heart had stopped when he saw his boy in the water; unsure of how long he’d been unsupervised. Incapable for a moment to tell if he was breathing or if it was the power of the water moving his small body…

Gohan had been fine, for the most part. He got his scrapes and bruises like any toddler, but seemed steadier and surer of himself every time he got up after falling down. Goku suspected there was power in his boy.

He hadn’t imagined how much.

Meeting his brother a couple of years later did not go well.

First of; he died.

Or, no, backing up: First he learned he was an alien, disconcerting but not immediately relevant in the face of his son getting kidnapped by a psychopath.

And this is where being a saiyan suddenly actually started to affect him in ways he was aware of.

He remembers screaming at his son to _run_. Fear strangling him to the point of panic for the first time in his life.

His son lived.

Turned out Gohan _did_ have a lot of power in his little body, but Goku was a bit too busy dying to ruminate much on this fact at the time.

So he died. It was pretty horrible.

Actually, dying never really got better, no matter how many times he did it, but that first time really took the cake with its newness and the remnants of general panic and fear.

Goku is brought back to the present by a rapidly approaching ki.

The wind whips him harshly in the face this high in the mountains, the sky grey and heavy with rain fat clouds. The Ox king’s castle used to be around these parts, but these days nature has reclaimed the rubble to the point where you can hardly tell. He sighs and thinks about standing up, but decides against it in the same breath.

Vegeta can go screw himself right now for all he cares. Goku is not in the mood.

The other saiyan lands softly besides him but doesn’t say anything. Just settles in to watch the sky and maybe ruminate, much like Goku has been doing.

Goku quickly loses his patience with this. He didn’t come out here for the company.

“What do you want Vegeta?”

“I thought you might be in the mood for a fight.”

Goku turns to glare at him. “Really.” He asks flatly. “Now? Of all times?”

Vegeta shrugs, almost uncomfortably. No, he is uncomfortable Goku realises; and suddenly it becomes clear why he’s here.

“You really have no social skills, even after all this time.” Goku tells him.

“I don’t want to hear that coming from you.”

Goku just huffs and turns away; draws a knee up to rest his chin on it and stares back out at the sky. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

“Lovely ambience.” Vegeta sneers. “Should you really be here right now?”

The first lightning flashes but the rain still doesn’t fall. The air grows thicker.

Goku clenches his fists. “It doesn’t matter where I am. It won’t change anything. And I know you want to goad me into fighting out of some strange sense of caring, but I really don’t want to right now.”

Lights zap across the sky and they listen to the roar. Like a battle in the heavens, but with no winners and losers. If only it was always that easy.

Vegeta, in a rare occurrence, doesn’t deny anything and doesn’t actually try to goad him any further. Strangely this almost unsettles Goku more.

“I suppose I should tell you condolences.” Vegeta says.

Silence stretches.

“Do you actually care?” Goku wonders.

Vegeta shrugs, which again is practically an admission. Goku closes his eyes. This is just another thing he didn’t want to deal with. Condolences is an empty word he has found. Even if the sentiment behind it isn’t, it rings hollow.

“85 years…” Vegeta says slowly. “That’s not bad, for a human.”

“Vegeta…..” Goku growls; he’s starting to change his mind about that fight.

“I didn’t come here to pity you Kakarot, I came because I’m the only other full blooded saiyan in this universe and that might bring you some comfort. I’m the only one able to understand.”

“…You? Comfort?” For the first time in days Goku almost wants to smile.

Vegeta falls silent and turns his face away. “It’s what _she_ would have suggested.”

 _Ahhh, of course._ Bulma. When he thinks about her it’s easy to imagine her grin; the one that says ‘I just figured something out that you didn’t’. He can’t help smiling at the memory and the warm feeling it brings.

Vegeta isn’t smiling, of course. Goku wonders if he can recall her as clearly as Goku can, but – no. Of course he’d do it better. Her existence was completely different for the two of them, even if the effect she had on their lives were about equally monumental.

“Should I say condolences too?” Goku asks.

“I got tired of hearing that platitude two years ago.” Vegeta says, voice calm.

“I got tired of it several hours ago.” Goku says, hesitates, then “days now, I guess.”

They fall silent again and watch the sky finally open up, like a big ladle having been filled and now emptied.

See, the thing is, Goku _is_ a saiyan. An alien. No matter if he walks, talks and looks like an earthling, he undeniably isn’t. Aside from the asshole beside him, he is one of a kind. The last.

His sons are part human. For the first time, he feels rage at that.

Gohan has strands of grey hair now; Goku….. Doesn’t.

xXx

He doesn’t realize he is screaming at first, his agonized roar mixing and drowning in the thunder, until his voice breaks and he coughs and cries. His throat hurts as he continues raging, fists clenched, at a heaven that keeps on rolling, a world that keeps turning and a clock that won’t stop ticking, despite leaving him behind.

Vegeta stays silent through it all. Goku doesn’t know if he did this too back then, two years ago, if the reality of what they are caught up and smacked him in the face the same way it has to Goku, or if he always knew.

He probably did. Unlike Goku, Vegeta has always been completely aware of what he is and how that sets him apart from humans, from everyone, really.

He wasn’t raised like a human, and he doesn’t think of himself like one.

Goku… Goku did.

It’s odd, he thinks, even as he cries, that it took his own wife dying to finally realise himself as something else, something _other._

The undeniable proof of time did what no measure of transformations and world engulfing battles managed.

Guku is a saiyan, and for the first time in over 60 years he finally _understands_ that.

It’s not just power, not just a tail or hair that changes colours. It’s time.

It’s that he’s so fundamentally different that he wasn’t even allowed to spend his life deluding himself to think he wasn’t.

Goku is 84 now, and for a saiyan, that’s still young.

According to Vegeta, they are, comparatively, in their mid twenties.

He’s younger than his sons.

xXx

Goku is leaning against the rocks when he comes to, and the rain has stopped. Or—no, he realises, he’s inside. A cave bathed red in the light from the fire Vegeta is poking at with a stick.

“Cried and screamed yourself into fit, then passed out. ‘Was pathetic.” Vegeta informs him with at least some small measure of joy.

“My sons are gonna die before me.” Goku states, because he can’t not. He has to say it, even if he can barely think it.

“So’s mine.” Vegeta snorts, but it lacks malice. His eyes are tired. “Just realised that, did you? Only took you 60 years.”

Goku closes his eyes. He can still see the flames beyond his lids. “How do you stand it?”

Vegeta is silent for a while, but Goku can feel his eyes on him.

“….I’ve always known what I lost, since a long time ago, Kakarot. But you’re only just beginning to realise.”

Vegeta lost many things, and despite what he’s claimed to feel about it in the past, Goku now realises that it has always mattered.

Even if he didn’t grieve at the loss of his planet and his – their – people like some would, like Goku would have had he been old enough to understand, it still never left him. But Vegeta understood the implications of this. He knew he belonged to a dead species and that no other full blooded saiyan would ever be born. He must have realised, soon, what it would mean for him to be the last. As he said, Goku is still just grasping.

“He he, this is the worst. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad we’re almost the same age Vegeta.”

From across the fire, Vegeta throws him a glare. “Don’t you dare say it you—“

“I’m glad I have you. Don’t die on me, kay?” Goku tells him, eyes focused and sincere.

Vegeta visibly shudders. “Fucking hell, why would you _say_ that you—Urgh.” He stands and strides off, out of the cave.

Goku can feel he didn’t go far, so he settles in to watch and warm himself by the fire.

Sooner than expected Vegeta returns; carrying the corpse of a wild boar the size of a car. “Make yourself useful dolt, and give me a hand with preparing this.” He demands.

Goku obliges and loses himself in the menial task of cutting and roasting the meat. They don’t talk while they work, and they eat in silence too.

They sit beside each other now, without saying anything about it. But it feels like the thing to do, here, sat in a cave with Vegeta’s shoulder brushing his every so often.

There isn’t much to it. It’s just closeness from someone Goku recognizes, maybe on a genetic or instinctual level, as one of _his_.

Like a pack comprised of two lone wolves.

Not that he’d ever share that comparison with Vegeta. He’d hate it.

xXx

Goku’s eyes feel sore and swollen, and the light from the newly cleared sky stabs at them when they step back outside the cave. The fire has gone cold behind them and of the boar remains nothing but bones.

Vegeta stretches, seemingly uncaring, and Goku closes his sore eyes, breathes the fresh petrichor and lets something settle inside him. It feels a lot like reclaiming something.

He wants to go hug his boys.

He doesn’t want to leave.

Vegeta doesn’t prompt him either way.

“Hey, Vegeta... Can we do this again?”

Goku feels the other saiyan watch him and turns to meet his eyes.

“What. You having a screaming fit and me feeding your sorry ass?” Vegeta asks, but his voice lacks derision. It’s like neither of them can find the sharp edge they used to have towards each other, not now, after what Goku is coming to realise was a change for both of them. Vegeta isn’t the only one anymore, and he feels this, Goku thinks.

“Just… Us.” He shrugs. “Something like this.” He says with a vague wave towards the cave and the lookout where they sat before.

Vegeta watches him in silence, his eyes dark but fuller. He sighs, turns his face towards the sky where the first birds throw themselves into the air, sure their wings will carry.

“Well, we have the time.” He answers.

Goku smiles.    

 


End file.
